


underneath my being is a road that disappeared

by thelandofnothing



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Arya X Gendry Week, AxG Week, Book Reunion, Day 1, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Post canon, Prompt: the return of spring, Reference to Lady Stoneheart, Winter, and a 100 year nap, arya just needs a hug and a friend, gendry is a grumpy boy, nymeria is a big girl, what would happen if arya came back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25694011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelandofnothing/pseuds/thelandofnothing
Summary: He hated winter, it hurt and hurt and hurt until a ghost appeared at the door and brought a warmth worth living for.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Gendry Waters, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 30
Kudos: 155





	underneath my being is a road that disappeared

**Author's Note:**

> just a little piece to contribute to axg week! hope you guys enjoy xx
> 
> title from: guaranteed - eddie vedder

**_-The Inn at the Crossroads-_ **

Winter stung like Hells. 

When Gendry peered down at his empty bowl and his stomach clenched with hunger, he looked at the nearest orphan to see if the bottom of their bowl was covered in whatever stew Jeyne made for them that night. Even if it meant for him to sleep without a near morsel of food to fuel him through the next day of grievous work in the forge. His body always ached when he roused, and it always ached when he attempted to fall asleep; a prayer from a distant past breathed on his lips as the scratchiness of his blanket did its best to cover him. 

He did not bother with weapons anymore, his armourer’s days behind him. Apart from mending the daggers and arrowheads of ragged and occasional guests, he focused on rusted door hinges, dented pots and pans, nails that he used to fix the leak in the stables and in the roof of his own forge. 

_His own forge._

When the winds stung, the only thing that warmed him is the thought of the dream of the small boy in Flea Bottom. The thought that he had been here far too long, long enough for roots to settle and thaw out the ice-ridden earth. Long enough to know that his bones will not lay to rest here.

When Jeyne had tried to press her lips against his, he had pushed her away and stalked to the woods, sitting alone until the night came alive and the cold forced him back inside. She had never asked, never pushed, only avoided him with an awkward glint in her eye that he knew was of embarrassment. That had made him angry, and seemingly more withdrawn than when he first stumbled on Masha Heddle’s door, hungry and lost and desperately seeking respite after days of crying himself hoarse after the remnants of a ghost that had disappeared into the night. 

Mostly, it had bothered him that it was up to him to regard the feelings and thoughts of others before he looked after himself. It annoyed him no one stood up for him, that the brand the Red Witch left kept festering like an unkempt welt. Because winter reminded him of _her._ Grey unyielding eyes and a heart that blazed like a beacon in the middle of a frozen wasteland. She remained as an unforgotten memory kept tucked away like a sea widow’s worn letter. He never talked of her to Willow when she asked which maid had stolen his heart. He never spoke when men of the Brotherhood teased him, or when whores gave him confused and displeased glances when he shrugged them off.

Living in a circle hurt worse than the cold. It reminded him of home. It almost made him miss the unpredictability of war, the times where he starved and slept in the mud and saw his life flashing across his eyes. But it was never Harrenhal’s whispers that he missed or Hot Pie’s useless chatter about browning the butter or the way the men of the Brotherhood recounted their trivial and brief encounters with whores of the Peach. It was the Arya Stark sized hole in his heart that had made him cower in his own desolation as winter took its toll. 

Winter hurt like Hells because it meant another day of forgetting a sliver of detail about her; how many freckles dot her nose or the way her jerkin had hung off her body. Or mayhaps, the way the rogue of her cheeks settled into a rosy pink when he teased her. 

But there was nothing he could do but wallow in the pain of his solitude and wait for the return of spring. 

* * *

Once a moon, the children are allowed to wash in warm water rather than funnelling down to the ice-cold river. While he waited, he dragged some lumber to splinter into firewood for the hearth in the dining hall. He worked rhythmically, the song of the axe tearing through the wood ringing throughout the small clearing. After an hour of labour, he stood to wipe the sweat from his brow, leaning on the handle. Suddenly from the woods, the sound of a branch breaking underfoot quelled his relaxation. 

Hearing the noise, he poised his axe, his head turning to the trees. 

That is when he spotted the wolf; a grey and powerful thing that stood nearly as tall as a horse. He froze, watching it regard him carefully with a set of topaz eyes. Dropping the axe, he remained where he was and waited as the beast studied him, almost as calculating as a man might size up a stranger. Yet nothing was hostile about the wolf’s peculiar gaze and the more Gendry spent under it, the more it felt almost familiar. 

The feeling dissipated almost immediately when the wolf turned its head and retreated back into the darkened woods, accompanied by the echo of a faint but sorrowful howl. He watched the shadows of it disappear until he was alone again, the axe at his feet and the pile of firewood by his side. Everything felt surreal as if winter itself had come to stare him in the face only to promise it was leaving. Gendry felt a change in the wind that whipped against his cloak, ruffling the patchy furs around his ears. 

Perhaps it was a sign, he thought, remembering an old friend’s account of a particular yellow-eyed companion. 

He shook his head and smiled to himself, bending down with a grunt to pick up the axe and a bundle of firewood. Winter had its way of deceiving him, and he would not be a fool for a ghost. 

Without looking back to the woods, he left in search of the warmth of the inn. 

With Jeyne and Willow still occupied with the children, he stepped inside, making a beeline for the kitchen. No matter how flavourless her stew was, Jeyne always knew how to make something that warmed the bones and he craved it. A floorboard creaked as he stepped over it, and he shook the outside off him, hanging his cloak up by the stairwell. He marched to the hearth, stamping his boots of the snow as he went and squatted down near the embers to assemble the lumber strategically in order to catch the remnants of the flame. Once the fire licked the wood, he stood up. 

“Can I have some ale?” a quiet voice asked him, and he jumped and turned to see a lithe figure under a hood sitting in the corner. 

He could not quite see who the guest was or recall when they had slipped inside but there was a strange aura surrounding them, shrouding them in a thick dark veil. 

“I’m a smith, not a barmaid,” he replied hoarsely, unafraid and hostile. “Innkeep will be back soon, children to take care of. Meanwhile, you can pour yourself your own cup.” 

He took the jug of mead and walked to the stranger’s table, placing it down with an affirmative clunk. He barely gave them another glance before he made his way inside to splash a little cold water on his face. The sighting of the wolf doing quite the number to his nerves and had managed to erupt an entourage of memories to the forefront of his mind. When he stood up and turned, he saw the same figure leaning against the archway to the kitchen, their hood down to reveal the gaunt yet pretty face of a grey-eyed woman. 

He froze.

“I didn’t know smiths couldn’t pour ale,” she said, and the voice sent shivers down his spine. 

He took a second to register her deep moon eyes and her limp but longer brown hair that was now half-tied behind her head. Her face was longer, and he could see where the hunger never left the hollows of her cheeks. Yet in the little half-smile she sported, there was no doubt the girl he had travelled with on the road all those years ago was staring back at him. 

_Arya._

“Aye, but doesn’t mean they want to,” he replied tensely, feeling his thorax bob with anticipation. 

She cocked her head. 

“Even for old friends?” 

He swallowed the panic down, willing his heart to stop its hazardous rattling against his chest. How many nights did he dream of ghosts? Ghosts that died in massacres and the hands of the Hound or somewhere along the road. How many times had it kept him up at night? Hearing his own voice echo as he called for her into the night. 

And here the very ghost was, smirking at him in a thick winter cloak and a pair of eyes that scorched right through him. Yet the ghost was a girl no longer and instead, a woman stood before him, dwelling in her own quiet authority that was new and intriguing. Once again, he felt the pull to her like when the hammer met the sword. 

“What? Cat got your tongue?” she asked, breaking him out of his reverie. 

He shook his head, reaching for the jug of ale. 

“No,” he replied. “Just need a drink.” 

_Or two._

* * *

The winter night brought a group of tired travellers within their doors and the bottom floor filled with chatter, drink and song. 

Oblivious to it all, he remained tucked away in a lamp-lit corner with Arya who sipped tentatively from her tankard as she observed the room with a look he just could not put a finger on. 

“Are you just to stare at me all night?” she snapped him out of his delirium. 

He snorted and buried his blush in the brim of his ale, hiding away the shame of being caught. He hated himself for letting his eyes drag down her frame, he hated himself more for letting his mind wander and think of things he should not think of. 

_She was beautiful._

And damn his heart for thinking so. 

“I thought you were dead,” she spoke honestly, the silence palpable between them despite the rowdiness of their background. 

He snorted. 

“I thought _you_ were dead. Thought the Hound carted you away and you perished in the Red Wedding” he returned, and he watched as she raised her brows. “Yet here we are.”

He did his best to hide the way his voice quivered at the mention of the event that had rattled his world since. The thought of Arya’s throat gaping open, with a hole in her belly or a knife in her back. He had taken to the woods and screamed himself hoarse when the Brotherhood had told him.

Yet even if she read him as well as he thought she was capable; she made no room to return his sentiment with her evasive wit. Instead, she closed her eyes and nodded her head, her lips pressed together pensively. 

She lifted her tankard, “I’ll drink to that.” 

She took a healthy gulp and set it down on the table with a clunk, brushing her mouth with the sleeve of her tunic. 

“I saw you with Nymeria,” she said as if it were a question and a fact all in the same tone. “My wolf, the grey one with the yellow eyes.”

He huffed. 

“I wouldn’t call her a wolf,” he told her and watched her unamused expression. “Wolves aren’t as tall as horses.” 

“She’s a direwolf,” Arya told him as if he were dumb. “The alpha of her pack and you were unafraid,” she observed. “Any other man would have been shitting their breeches.” 

He choked on his mead and looked at her with wide eyes until the look of her face brought him back to seriousness. He could not tell if she was impressed or simply studying him all over again. The thought made it feel as though he were drinking with a stranger instead of the forever adored long-lost friend he had kept in his heart. 

“I had an axe,” he shrugged their shoulders. “Would rather the children not have to deal with a man-eating wolf.”   
  


“She’s not children-eating,” she told him, the defiant furrow in her brow making him laugh. 

“If you say so m’lady,” he chuckled, and the furrow grew deeper.

“Don’t call me that,” she demanded. 

He lifted a brow in challenge, and she looked back at him before resigning to staring at her reflection in the bottom of her tankard. 

“What are you doing here Arya?” he asked her, desperate to catch her before she retreated back into the solemnness he was first greeted with. 

“I’ve been away,” she replied. “Across the Narrow Sea.” 

“Where?” he questioned. “What brought you away from all of this.” 

She looked up at a spot on the wall he could not locate but seemed to be where she could find an answer, for it took her another moment before she could mutter a reply. 

“Revenge,” she whispered. “It was curdling in my blood. I needed to learn.” ~~~~

“Then what brings you here?” he suddenly asked, watching her features morph from their peculiar iron curtain into something more recognisable. “Why here of all places if you’ve seen the world?” 

She took a minute to respond, watching her reflection in the darkened reflection of her mead as the world continued on around them, oblivious to the moment between them that had frozen in time. 

“Spring brought me here,” she whispered and looked up at him with her dark brows furrowed.

* * *

He watched her tilt her head to the darkened sky as they exited the inn’s door, away from the safety of the hearth and the quiet candlelit table and their wordless conversations over ale.

If there was one thing he had learnt in the hours he had been reacquainted with Arya, it was that she now spoke without saying too many words. And when she did, he could not sense the anger or the rage of a girl who had lost everything. He heard the calculated vocabulary of a woman who had learnt lessons and wore the world on her shoulders. 

The thought scared him. 

“What will you do once spring comes?” she asked him, her cheeks rosy from too much mead and the sting of the cold. 

_Wait,_ he thought, _wait until winter came again._

She seemed to read his thoughts right from his face because she smirked and looked away. 

“Not much to do around here but wither,” she told him. “Is that what you’re planning?” 

He stared at her incredulously, trying to observe her enough to catch a sliver of vulnerability. But Arya was winter, and winter was numb and frozen over in places he could not crack. 

“Tell me about the Lady,” she asked but did not demand because it quickly fell into place. Winter hurt and hurt and hurt, and so did Arya, with each inch of her warm heart. And when it froze over, only to melt again, the more it would sting and the more it would burn. What could he tell her about the Lady over than the rumours of a wolf pulling her out of the Trident; naked and brutalised, her neck hanging open like a smile? Could he tell her that the Lady’s vengeance reminded him of an old friend’s, however twisted and macabre it truly was? 

He would keep those thoughts to himself, bottle them up and never let them past the cage of his heart. The Lady did not feel as Arya did. He knew that. Arya with little Weasel, or the women of Harrenhal or caring for those around her more than she did for herself. 

“What do you want to know?” he simply returned in a quiet, gentle voice. 

Because unbeknownst to her, he knew she needed quiet and gentle, like the lapping waves of the stream by the inn or the laughter of hungry orphans or the song of steel, forging the hinges for the doors to keep out the cold. 

Arya knew hurt like a lesson and he knew it by her face. 

_Or the ale was working its magic._

“Why do you follow her?” she asked, the wind whipping her hair from her simple braid behind her head and Gendry resisted the tuck the loose strands away. 

“Why do you think,” Gendry answered, leaning down on his haunches to pick out a weed peeking out from the snow. 

“Because she’s my mother,” Arya replied, unmoving as he continued his useless distraction. “Because fuck the Freys.” 

He snorted. 

“Fuck the Freys,” he repeated with earnest. 

He looked up at her and to his delight, she let out a positively evil smirk. But after a moment it vanished from her face and she went back to her aimless staring at something he did not quite think even existed. 

“She’s not my mother,” she replied, looking down at her boots as the winds became feral and began to screech. “My mother died at the Twins, and no kiss of life could have ever brought her back.” 

Gendry rose as she closed her eyes. 

“It’s strange,” she said, and he listened and bated his breath. “That spring is so far away.” 

He let out a huff that was part amusement and part disbelief. He hated winter; he hated the cold because there was nothing to warm him up. But when he looked at Arya, his stomach blushed and everything began to tingle, right down to his freezing toes and fingers.

Arya looked at him, and then looked down and up and down again as if she were sizing him up for a meal. 

“You’re just surviving,” she told him, a little pity in her eyes as she studied him. 

“Isn’t that what we always did,” he replied, smiling a little. 

She took a step towards him, and then another and another and another until she was standing a hairsbreadth away from him, the smoke from their exhales mingling with one another. He could smell her, the gentle pine and earthy tones of her hair with something new. His heart stopped thundering in his chest and his heart flooded with warmth. 

“I want to live,” she whispered. 

He shuddered out a breath. 

“Then live,” he hissed. 

She stepped on the balls of her feet and pressed her lips against his.

She pushed against him, her warmth morphing into his as if they were for a moment, one entity, breathing and living and sharing warmth together. But underneath the static of their frozen and chapped lips, she met him with the same fury he had always associated with her character. A fury that had not disappeared after years of exhausted separation.

She pushed him in the direction of his forge, a place he could not let himself question her for knowing without his telling. 

When they stumbled blindly through the door into the dark, still attached by the lips and by the firm clutch he held her waist in, she was bathed in the light of humble dying embers. He pulled away and watched her flushed face, her chest heaving with exertion as she simmered in the scorch of steel and soot. 

“Arya,” he muttered and searched for her lips again. 

He heard the soft sound of the backs of her knees hitting the edge of his cot, and she tumbled, her hair fanning the dirty cloth, smeared black. She fitted within the cutting stench of smoke and the piercing bite of metal. He followed her and immersed her in the dark as she beckoned for him and soon the hurt and the sting of the cold dissipated and all he could do was feel. 

* * *

When dawn came and his eyes flickered open to witness Arya sitting on the edge of the cot. 

He watched as she dressed methodically, each layer of clothing to protect herself from the cold and get further away from him. When she had leaned down to lace her boots, his voice called out on its own accord. 

“Where are you going?” he asked her, watching her freeze in the doorway of the forge. She took a breath, and then another, before turning towards him with fear written on her face. 

“I need to see the Lady” she replied, letting the satchel drop. 

His brows furrowed against his own will, anger welling like a blister. 

“You were going to leave without—”

She shook her head, her lip finding itself purchase in between her teeth. She took a step towards him and then another until she was standing in front of him. 

“I wasn’t,” she assured, sitting down and putting a hand to his bare shoulder and pushing him down so he was lying down. “I wasn’t.”

“But you’re packed,” he snapped, and she turned her head shamefully. “I’m right, aren’t I? This is no little trip down to the stream, you’re going for good.”

She looked at him again, her eyes wide and concerned like a frightened doe’s. 

“You have a life here,” she whispered. “A promise of spring, of a wife or..."

He let out an exasperated breath of air. 

“You said—” 

“I said it with hypocrisy,” she told him firmly. “There’s no living if life succumbs to revenge. 

“This isn’t living either, m’lady,” he sat up, pushing against the flat of her hand. “Living was starving in the mud with you, following moss round and round in circles,” he ignored her small glare. “And last night, when I saw you in the doorway. I felt as though my blood was singing. And then you kissed me and…” 

He trailed off as Arya’s hand trailed to his cheek, her fingers tracing his stubble. 

“Living isn’t running away,” he told her firmly. “Living is happiness and happiness is shared.” 

He saw her swallow nervously as she took in the words. The silence was so thick, he could have sworn he could hear how her breath hitched slightly. 

“Would you come with me then? Come North?” she asked, the question barely a whisper. “We could find out what it is to live.”

He smiled and held her hand that was against his face. 

“Aye, I’ll go with m’lady.’ 

Instead of berating him, she smiled. The greys of her eyes shone under the dawn light that flitted through the windows. 

“Stay,” he pleaded.

He watched her look at the door and then back at him. For a moment that felt like a generation, he waited patiently as she considered her options. Finally, she looked at him and then she was unlacing her boots and unbuckling her belt and unclipping her jerkin. Her breeches slid down her legs and she was left in her light tunic and her tattered socks. She climbed over the bed, her belongings discarded by the door and she sat in front of him. She put a hand to his shoulder and pushed him slightly until he was lying down again. He felt her settle beside him, her head leaning against his chest. 

“Just for a little while,” she whispered. “Then we’ll go find spring.” 

**Author's Note:**

> ur support means the world to me :)


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